July 24, 2012

Apple's 25 Granted Patents Include Apple TV & Future ID App

The US Patent and Trademark Office officially published a series of twenty-five newly granted patents for Apple Inc. today. In our first report of the day we covered a wild patent that detailed a wide variety of technologies ranging from a future TV system right through to a signature touch pad that could start a vehicle. In our second report of the day we cover the vast majority of Apple's utility patents that touch on everything from camera to smartphone technologies and in between we cover the user interface for Apple TV and a future ID App that will identify objects found in museums and guided tours.

Apple Granted a Patent for Apple TV User Interface

Apple has received a Granted Patent relating to Apple TV's user interface.

Patent Claim #1: A computer-implemented method, comprising: receiving, at a computing device, one or more content items from one or more resources, wherein content items include multimedia content, audio content, video content, image content, and user generated content; displaying the content items, wherein the display includes a group of content items, wherein a pre-determined amount of two or more content items in the group are initially selectable, wherein the remaining content items in the group are initially non-selectable, wherein the group of content items is capable of having multiple states within the display, wherein the multiple states include a starting state, a middle state, and an ending state, wherein a starting state initially includes a flat content item on the left and one or more tilted content items on the right, wherein a middle state includes one or more tilted content items on the left and on the right, wherein an ending state initially includes one or more tilted content items on the left and a flat content item on the right, and wherein the state of the group of content items changes when a non-selectable content item in the group is selected; receiving a selection corresponding to a content item in the group of content items, wherein the content item is associated with a type; determining whether the selected content item is a shared content item, wherein shared content items are syncable among a plurality of devices; associating one or more options with the selected content item, wherein the one or more options are based upon the type associated with the content item and whether the selected content item is a shared content item; and displaying the one or more options associated with the selected content item.

Apple has received a Granted Patent that relates to portable electronic devices and more particularly to systems and methods for identifying objects and for providing information related to the identified objects.

Today, the iPhone and iPad (iDevices) are able to take pictures of objects found in a museum, for example, but they aren't able to relate any specific information about the object of interest. As another example, the user could use an iDevice to listen to an audio tour that may provide recorded information about pieces of art. Although the user may be allowed to fast forward or rewind the audio tour, the information provided by the audio tour is fixed. Therefore, the user can't access information about other art in the museum that has not been recorded as part of the audio tour. Moreover, even for the art that is included on the audio tour, the user is limited to the information that has already been recorded.

Apple's granted patent is about a possible future iPhone feature. Apple states that in order to detect an object, the portable electronic device will be able to automatically determine the current environment and, based on the determined environment, select a detection technology (e.g., a RFID reader, a camera, and an IR image capture device). For example, if the portable electronic device detects active RFID tags broadcasting signals to the RFID reader, the portable electronic device can use the RFID reader to detect objects.

In some embodiments, the portable electronic device could allow the user to select a mode based on the types of objects that the user wants to identify. Based on the selected mode, the portable electronic device could adjust parameters used for searching an identification database. For example, if the user selects to identify an object in a "MUSEUM" mode, the portable electronic device could search the identification database for objects that are commonly found in a museum.

In some embodiments, the portable electronic device could determine the location of the user to help identify an object. For example, if the user is determined to be in Las Vegas and the portable electronic device is set to a "RESTAURANT" mode, the device could limit the search of the identification database to restaurants in Las Vegas.

Apple's patent FIG. 5 shows a schematic view of an illustrative display screen of a home screen that has an ID App 506; FIG. 6 shows a schematic view of an illustrative display screen for selecting objects to identify; FIG. 7 shows a schematic view of an illustrative display screen for providing configuration options such as RFID, IR Camera and specific modes such as Museum, People, Restaurant and more.

Apple credits Michael Rosenblatt as the sole inventor of this patent which was originally filed in Q2 2008 and published today by the US Patent and Trademark Office. Our June 2011 patent report titled "Apple working on a Sophisticated Infrared System for iOS Cameras," is related to this future iDevice application and service from Apple.

8,230,366 Dynamically changing cursor for user interface: Apple's invention relates to computer user interfaces, particularly graphical user interfaces. More specifically, the present invention relates to a dynamically changing cursor within a graphical user interface environment to assist the user in determining the state of a given application or action being performed.

8,230,358 Defining motion in a computer system with a graphical user interface: Apple's patent relates to allowing a user to customize the application of shadow effects to text.

8,230,073 Service templates for an IP multimedia subsystem: Apple's invention relates to telecommunications and in particular to providing service templates, which provide aggregation of services, for an IP multimedia subsystem.

8,228,047 Power converters having varied switching frequencies: Apple's patent relates to improving efficiency of battery-powered devices, and more particularly to two-stage power converters that use varying switching frequencies.

Patently Apple presents only a brief summary of granted patents with associated graphics for journalistic news purposes as each Granted Patent is revealed by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office. Readers are cautioned that the full text of any Granted Patent should be read in its entirety for full details. About Comments: Patently Apple reserves the right to post, dismiss or edit comments.